Sports drama: Storytelling in Frozen Endzone

Frozen Endzone, Mode 7’s Frozen Synapse style future-sports game, just got a lot more intriguing – not that it didn’t pique my interest before – with the unveiling of the upcoming single-player mode.

The single-player campaign uses the framework of the traditional season mode, but throws in character interaction and the potential for sports drama and evolving stories.

Mode 7’s been working away on the single-player mode on the downlow, and while it isn’t ready to be released, the studio’s now ready to tease how it works.

The mode contains seven AI-controlled teams, distinct from each other, and run by their own AI coaches. These coaches are all characters and they’ll react to the player based on how they feel about their human opponent. Some will show admiration, while others will be filled with hate.

Mode 7 says that any dialogue from the coaches will be informed by how they feel about the player, and how well the player’s team has performed in the league. The league itself – the Global Cortex League – can be influenced by league-wide rules proposed by the coaches, and storylines and “intrigues” that play out within the league will have an impact on player progress.

The progress goes beyond working one’s way up the league, as teams can be customised and matches can lead to stat increases as well as the continuation of the storyline which also changed depending on what team is controlled by the player.

So there’s a bit of roleplaying going on, and it sounds rather nifty.

“We’ve been working on this a lot behind-the-scenes for a while and making progress on it is very exciting,” says Mode 7. “This kind of gameplay isn’t something that will work with incremental updates, so you’ll have to bear with us as we polish it up to the level where we’re happy to show it to you.”

Frozen Endzone is in the Early Access phase at the moment, and can be picked up on Steam for £18.99/$24.99.